The flowers around the Old Well and the South Building are blooming and that means one thing: time for Spring Cleaning.
If you’re like me, then you hate cleaning bathrooms, kitchens and vacuuming. But I love organizing and purging my closet.
The benefits of having an organized and minimalist wardrobe are unending. You’ll feel freer, less stressed and happier with your clothes (and your life!). Here are some guidelines and tips!
In The Closet
The Magical Number: 37
It's ideal to only have 37 “hanging” pieces in your wardrobe. This means there are 37 hangers in your closet and you can only have one article of clothing on each one. This number isn’t terribly low and helps you visualize which pieces of your wardrobe are the most important. Now, your t-shirts, underwear and gym clothes are not factored into the 37 because those are considered functional items and functional items should be kept.
Plato’s Closet
Take all of your unwanted items to Plato’s Closet — a consignment shop that buys ~trendy~ young adult clothes and then resells them in their stores. The closest one is at the Streets of Southpoint in Durham.
Here’s how it works: you drop of your unwanted clothes, come back a couple hours later and they give you back clothes they don’t want and buy the ones they like from you. Super simple. Then you can take the clothes they didn’t want to buy to Goodwill as a donation and get that tax deduction. Either way, you’re getting money.
Dry Cleaning
As you’re sorting through your clothes to decide which to keep or give away, you’ll likely run into a few ‘keep’ items *should* be dry cleaned. Put all of them in a different pile and take them all to the dry cleaners this week. It’ll feel amazing to know that anything special might need to wear is readily available and freshly dry cleaned.
The Purge: Dresser Edition
Underwear
One of my favorite sayings is “Life is too short to not have the underwear, coffee and haircut you want.” So if you’re going through your underwear and you can’t visualize yourself feeling confident wearing them in an intimate situation, then THROW THAT SH*T OUT. Your underwear should make you WANT to take your clothes off. My Versace underwear might be $75 per pair but I think that’s a small price to pay for self-confidence, don’t you?
T-Shirts
I don’t care how many t-shirts you have but you only need half that number. Trust me, everyone has too many t-shirts and they usually keep twice as many as they actually need. Put all the ones that you don’t wear anymore into a pile and send them off to Project Repat to have them made into a t-shirt quilt.
TIPS
“I should keep this until I get a new one”
NO MA’AM. Toss it. Buh-bye. Adios.
If you’ve needed a new pair of sneakers for the last two months and you still haven’t taken the initiative to find a new pair then you need to lite a fire under yourself. Throw them out and you’ll be forced to find a new pair real quick.
Designated Spaces
Everything in your wardrobe should have a designated space. This will help keep your closet and wardrobe organized. If you are having a difficult time finding a designated space for an item then you probably don’t care that much about that particular item and should put in the donate pile.
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